The Value of Design

Confidential report provided courtesy of Peer Insight. Please do not copy or distribute.
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BUSINESSWEEK
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MEET THE
INNOVATION GURUS
Epiphanies for hire: When it comes to out-of-the-box thinking,
these are the Magnificent Seven
THE COACH
Jeneanne Rae
Peer Insight,
Alexandria, Va.
J
ENEANNE RAE IS
the doyenne of service
innovation. With her
Harvard University MBA
and seven years at IDEO, the
Palo Alto (Calif.) design-strategy
powerhouse, Rae is carving out
a niche in showing service
companies how to innovate.
She co-founded Peer Insight
LLC, a service innovation consortium, in which members pay
a fee for Rae to run innovation
audits. Using Peer Insight as a
confidential intermediary (it
alone knows the origin of
specific information), members then share in the successes
and failures of the group and benchmark their progress.
With Rae acting as an innovation coach, the goal is to help
service companies understand how to shape their consumers’ experiences. She uses design principles to rethink
company strategies. Peer Insight so far has signed up seven
companies as charter members – Diebold, Hewlett-Packard,
MasterCard International, Siebel Systems, Siemens,
Starwood Hotels & Resorts,
and York International. Peer
Insight has also done innovation research for 37 other
companies, from FedEx to
T-Mobile.
According to Rae, there is
little innovation in services.
Service companies have good
brand and marketing people,
she says, but there’s no one in
charge of innovation. “They’re
like tech companies,” adds
Rae. “They come up with
new things and just launch
them at consumers. They
don’t get that it’s all about
interacting with customers
first and then giving them
great experiences.” One
exception is Starwood, which
has a Chief Creative Officer.
Rae also serves as an adviser
to Procter & Gamble Co.’s Claudia Kotchka and other innovation leaders. And her course, Developing New Products
and Services, at Georgetown University’s McDonough School
of Business, is hugely popular. Rae, along with most of
these gurus, will be a columnist for BusinessWeek’s online
Innovation & Design portal. There she will discuss the 17
disciplines that can be used as an innovation scorecard for
service companies.
August 1, 2005 | BusinessWeek | 79